


see what I've become

by kunnskat



Series: Winter was Here [5]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: BAMF Arya Stark, F/F, F/M, Faceless Arya, Gen, Mentions of Arya & Jaime, Mentions of Arya & Tyrion, Mentions of the Lannister kids, Mentions of the Lannister siblings, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-05
Packaged: 2019-01-19 01:13:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12400035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kunnskat/pseuds/kunnskat
Summary: Arya Stark returns to a time where she has to live her entire life pretending to be someone else, giving up her name and life and her face to make the world a better place. Starting with making sure the North is prepared for the Dead and making sure the South does not muck things up all over again.ORArya pretends to be her aunt, servants and several Lannisters and turns out to be better at it than she'd thought she'd be.





	see what I've become

**Author's Note:**

> I am working on a chapter for 'safety', it's got some words down, but I won't post until it passes 2k words and as my uncle recently died, it's been difficult to write. This was much more complete and is being posted as is despite only lacking about 400 words to reach the word count I'd prefer.

She sits at the Head of the table where her father has sat for all of his life and waits with patience for the room to be filled with the people she has longed to see again. She knows it will happen soon, she knows she will not have to wait for long, for a servant steps in and immediately falters at the sight of her. A gasp, the sound of a word she believes to be 'ghost' leaves his lips, and he turns and bolts right out of there, duties forgotten as he flees her presence.

She lets him go though she knows his first act will be to spread the rumor of her existence. The word will soon enough reach her mother and her father and her brothers and her sister and everyone else in Winterfell that she lost a long time ago.

She does not need to wait for long, just as she had known.

Her father falters when he sees her, but unlike the servant that had spotted her first, he does not stop nor does he turn around and leave.

No, Eddard Stark walks closer, his eyes only for her and an expression she only knows how to read from a life where she was the one that could read her cousin better than anyone, even his Queen. There is wonder and there is a hint of wary hope that she knows even he knows is useless to feel at this moment. She knows he had been there when his sister died, to make him doubt that is a mistake she has no intention of making.

She is not Lyanna, and she couldn't even begin to pretend if given the chance. She may be who she is, she may have reminded all of her lost aunt, but she is still more of herself than Lyanna and her father will not miss it, should she stay.

Arya won't be staying, of course. She's got so much more to do than to sit here and wait for the end to come.

He finally stops when he is only so close that if they both reach out, they might touch, and she feels for him. She feels pity and sadness and guilt and she hopes that when the future comes, and he lives to see the other her grow up to look just like her, he will forgive her.

She aches to touch him, to reassure herself that he is real and he is there and so is she. And she knows this is no dream, she knows she is either dead or where she had aimed to go, but she still cannot help herself. She has to see them all one more time before she goes. One more time before she leaves to save them all. Just one more time.

Arya knows he is waiting for her to speak, but all the words she'd thought she'd say are stuck in her throat, and hesitance holds her hostage enough that she can only smile at him and accept that he will mistake her anyway.

"Who are you?" he asks, and she knows the answer he wants so desperately to hear, but she cannot. 

She cannot. 

"Go North, Lord Stark. Winter is coming."

Rising, she cannot help but reach out for him, to touch him and know she may never see him again. And knowing he will never know her as who she is, she strokes his cheek like that of a sister -- a mother, if she is to be true to herself, but that word aches too much in her heart to dare use.

Arya leaves him there in confused silence, knowing he will follow her if she lingers. She has to disappear, she has to let him believe it is just a sign. He has to believe he sees her go where he thinks she belongs. With the dead.

He's got to stay away from King's Landing and the Lannisters and Arya knows none of them will willingly go to the Wall. And if Robert Baratheon does drag them there? Then perhaps finally the Wall will get the men it needs. All possibilities from this desperate gamble can only be good, be better than the future to come.

Lyanna is a ghost, and she cannot play her, but Cersei Lannister still lives and breathes and Arya has known how to be someone else for quite some time.

The only ones she thinks she might not fool are her Lannister brothers, but Arya knows how to distract one and she also knows how to irritate the other into dismissing it for a while.

Fooling Cersei is as easy as she'd thought it would be, she lets the servants pass her by without a thought as to who they may be and if those servants happen to bear anything deeming them Lannister men -- or women -- she does not hesitate to use them to do her bidding. Arya uses that against her when she begins as a plain servant, slowly moving herself closer but being careful in the faces she takes. 

Until she gains access to poor little Lancel Lannister who suffers as nothing more than a slave to the whims of the King.

Arya knows all about Lancel Lannister and the time he'd spent in Cersei's chambers from the mouth of a brother who'd longed to get his heartache off of his chest. She hadn't been the best person to rage to, but she'd been one of the best options left at the end of it. He would have been pleased, though saddened, to know of this, if he could have seen her now.

In the end she's quite happy to make this disappear from the pain in his eyes, knowledge he will never know of in this time. Before he'd gone and died to save her life, she'd been satisfied with calling him a friend of a friend or something equally vague and possibly insulting while at the same time teasing, but after she hadn't had the heart to use any word but friend in front of the only Lannister left.

Tyrion had died quickly after that, fortunately, so she hadn't needed to speak of him at all then.

Arya finds herself summoned to serve Cersei quicker than anticipated but she cannot let the chance pass her by and while Cersei throws her head back and moans, Arya lifts herself from between her legs and stabs her right in the heart, watching her die with a smile she cannot hide.

Last time she hadn't gotten to kill her, the woman that fancied herself Queen had died giving birth to the last child Jamie would ever father. A daughter that hadn't survived the Winter that had come upon them all and taken the lives of every newborn baby until no one dared try for one.

The mask of Lancel is only kept on long enough to create that of Cersei, and when Arya becomes the Queen, she ensures that the King slaps her for sending Lancel off to do her bidding elsewhere. Jaime watches it happen and rages about it after, when the King cannot hear it, and Arya touches his cheek and smiles at him in gratitude and knows he has seen nothing of who she truly is when he drags her into his arms and kisses her like he loves her.

He doesn't, neither her nor the true Cersei, but he thinks he knows what love is and lets it control all that he has ever been and ever will be. She hopes to introduce him to Brienne before it is too late this time, but does not let it stop her from melting into the face of Cersei and telling him she'll only ever love him and no one else.

They have to believe, all of them. She needs it if she's going to control the future, though a part of her knows that if she'd come to Robert with her true face, he'd have taken her for her resemblance to Lyanna and not cared a lick for Cersei other than to use the Lannister fortunes.

Arya does not wish to sully her own true body with the man who'd fathered so many bastards that it was well known throughout the Kingdoms.

She kills Joffrey too, because Jon Arryn is still alive and the sooner Robert starts taking notice of the world around him, the better. And Joffrey needs to die, there is no redeeming him. She can't even pretend to be him, she'd have made many more mistakes than she may already be doing with Cersei. But with Joffrey dead, she can act as she'd like and as she needs to and it'll be explained as the actions of a mother who has lost a child.

It's ridiculously easy, actually, and Joffrey never lives to learn that it wasn't an accident. 

The Kingdoms do, but that's on purpose.

Jaime guards the other two children like his life depends on it and Robert has the small council chase every lead on who might be responsible. She whispers in his ear that perhaps it is time for a new Hand of the King, one who will spend his time ensuring that justice is served, just like the true Cersei would have, but she also talks of how it happened because Joffrey was a Prince and if the Prince could be murdered in his own home, who would be next. She's very careful, of course, but she gets her way and Jon Arryn returns to the Vale, still alive and not yet knowing the truth of the Lannister children.

A raven flies to Winterfell for Eddard Stark the same day as Lord Arryn leaves Kings Landing, bearing a request she knows he will turn down if he has gone North as she had asked him to.

Arya is prepared for the alternative because her father is a stubborn man who does not see the signs without them being pointed out to him.


End file.
